I feel very lucky to have Professor Moritz as one of my professors for a class at Victoria College in the University of Toronto. It was by a somewhat unusual, I guess, turn of events that I ended up having a conversation with him after class last week and in relation to our discussion he pulled “The Sentinel” from his bookshelf and offered to let me borrow it so that I could have a read. I was excited by the prospect and looked forward to it, having grown to enjoy his class quite a bit.

The same happened with these poems. I grew to love and enjoy them, even if some I didn’t connect with or others left me feeling lost somewhere along the way. But there was much to admire about them, bot structurally and thematically. There are some poems especially with pointing out, such as the opening poem ‘The Butterfly’, which was the strongest and most mesmerizing in the entire collection. There was such range over the course of it, something fragile and powerful sitting at the very hard and tapping away quietly, waiting to be released. And it did. The poems really picked up towards the end with their pace and strength of tone. ‘Cassandra’, ‘The Titanic’, ‘Ideal Song of the Communists’ and ‘The First, Second, Third, and Fourth’ were the other poems I particularly enjoyed and felt deserved to be singled out. I was amazed by how strongly stitched together the imagery in these poems was, held together by a powerful and wise voice. Not surprisingly I had Professor Moritz’s voice in my head while I read all of these, which made the experience all the more memorable.

Once I return this copy I shall go out and look for one to buy for myself. I know I will want to revisit these poems in the near and far future, to feel their impact run over me again and puzzle over how such concise and clear words can leave such an impact. This collection deserves to be read and admired, and deserves all the praise it has gotten.